Fuseli Imagery in Frankenstein

Last weekend, I traveled to Orlando for "Halloween Horror Nights" at Universal Studios, where I also had the good fortune to find James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN playing on the big screen in City Walk. Naturally, I gobbled up the chance to take in the big screen experience, though the afternoon showing I went to only had six people in attendance--and that included me, along with the two people I talked into tagging along. Still, watching Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, and Dwight Frye in larger-than-life form made the early evening drive back home very much worth it.

The big screen also gave me an opportunity to soak in one of the my favorite moments of the film, specifically when the monster intrudes on Elizabeth as she prepares for her wedding. This sequence has never lost its unsettling impact for me, as we see the monster clearly unhinged after accidently drowning a young girl, and it doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility that he does something unspeakable with Elizabeth. The implication seems all the more evident when we consider the need he feels for a mate in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.



I love how Whale frames the scene to look like Fuseli's 1781 painting, "The Nightmare," which features an incubus crouching atop a sleeping woman. Perhaps Whale structured the scene this way intentionally, calling upon an association with the painting's metaphor for transgressive sex. Or maybe I just want to view the film in a kinky way . . .

Halloween is . . . the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow

"On mounting a rising ground," writes Washington Irving in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "which brought the figure of his fellow traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror struck, on perceiving that he was headless!" No story says Halloween better than this one. This year, my local supermarket decorated its foyer with a life-sized paper mache of Irving's famous spectre, and we even find new M & M television advertising featuring a pretty nifty headless Hessian. Modern readers might find Irving's original text a bit wordy, yet it still evokes an eerie magic, with its haunted church-yard and ominous woods. Reading it today still transports us into the hearth, where we live "the "marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him."



Contemporary film-makers still feel drawn to the story, and their attempts to capture Irving's magic have let to varying degrees of success, from contemporary interpretations like THE HOLLOW and HEADLESS HORSEMAN (the latter which gave the story a backwoods horror angle, not unlike THE HILLS HAVE EYES of all things), to Tim Burton's wonderful SLEEPY HOLLOW, which re-imagined Ichabod Crane as a police detective. Still, the most brilliant interpretation comes from the least likely source: Disney's 1949 adaptation.



Watching Disney's version on TV during the 1970s became one of the most formative experiences of my young imagination. Narrated (and sometimes sung) by Bing Crosby, the story stays remarkably faithful to Irving's original story. The animators use deep, rich colors to capture the horrific majesty of the horseman, and even peppered with humor, the terror that Ichabod feels on his fateful ride seems real and genuine. One of the most remarkable moments occurs when Ichabod, forced into an embrace with the spectre, peers down into the open neck hole of the horseman's tunic and sees . . . what? Something that evokes terror, something that undercuts the ambiguous ending that Irving's story leaves with us. It all might have been Brom Bones' practical joke, but Ichabod sees something that terrifies and possibly revolts him. This is a moment of genius on the part of Disney's animators, and (I mean this) one of the greatest moments of horror film history.



Reportedly, Disney's imagineers originally planned to tie its Haunted Mansion attraction in to the Sleepy Hollow legend. According to Jason Surrell's book on the history of the attraction, the original concept involved a climax in the conservatory, where spectators would witness the crossing of the headless horseman past the window overlooking the graveyard. How cool would that have been?

WITCHES' NIGHT (2008)

Here's a well-made independent film that reminds us that, deep down, beneath tons of psychic scar tissue created when we watched Disney's SNOW WHITE at a young age, many of us still find old, cloaked ladies with crooked noses and hunched backs scary. Not since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT has a film indulged those old fears, taking us into a frame of mind created when the Christians of Europe sought to suppress pagan religions by portraying its practitioners as diabolical and evil--with ugly faces to prove it. Full discosure: I liked this movie, and the filmmakers did their homework, including references to Samhain, the Witches' Sabbat that falls on November Eve, as well as MALLEUS MALFICARUM, or THE WITCHES' HAMMER, which offered instructions on how to detect and effectively execute a witch. However, unlike THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, WITCHES' NIGHT taps into the fear of female sexuality that the demonization of witches ultimately represents.



With an attractive female cast and eroticized rituals (as well as violence), this is a sexy film, though without the trvialization that we might see in a Misty Mundae production. The very plot begins with male rejection, as the protagonist struggles with the anguish caused by his fiancee leaving him at the altar. To cheer him up, his three friends take him on a camping trip, intending a night of beer drinking, male bonding, and a "women, who needs 'em" mindset to get them through the crisis. Naturally, the four men choose the wrong woods for their camping trip, for a coven of ancient witches has made it the scene of their Halloween Sabbat. Capable of altering their appearance, the witches appear as seductive young women, intended to make the guys forget all about that terrible woman who left their buddy at the altar. Sexual congress with these ladies, however, results in blindness, mutation, and horrible swelling (not the good kind, either).



The film's director, Paul Traynor, effectively combines seductive images with the traditional "hag" archetype associated with witchcraft. At first we get only obscured glimpses of the witches in their true form--scurrying behind trees, glaring at the men from behind branches, adding a degree of unease to the film's overall effect. They come to represent a power beyond the male imagination, attuned to a malevolent form of nature to which the men fall prey. Modern day experts in witchcraft might rightfully remind us that the image of the "hag" represented wisdom in pre-Christian religions, its eventual association with evil a means of a reactionary effort to suppress those religions. While WITCHES' NIGHT does not make an effort to correct this--it wants to scare us after all--it tells its story well, and for an independent film, it comes across as a polished, professional effort. With its Halloween setting and use of classic archetypes, it makes for good holiday viewing.



The film is available for download or on DVD at http://www.witchesnight.com/. Considering the paucity of good horror films at the multiplex, WITCHES' NIGHT is worth the effort to seek it out.

COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE (1972)

Where I live, we don't have proper seasons, so I often have to kick off Autumn through artificial means, like buying tons of Halloween decorations, or watching a movie that lets me imagine an added crispness in the air. BCI's recent release of COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE (titled in their double bill with VAMPIRE HOOKERS as CEMETERY GIRLS) gave me the opportunity to do so with one of Paul Naschy's best films, a riff on the Dracula mythology that has very little to do with Bram Stoker, but still has a uniquely Spanish aesthetic that makes it a pleasure to watch. The film starts off with scenes and scenarios that seem lifted straight out of a Hammer production--in fact, DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS comes most immediately to mind, with a plot that starts with a group of stage-coach travelers stranded in the Borgo Pass. Naturally, they wind up in Dracula's abode, which apparently spent time as a mental asylum, and the group gradually falls prey to the vampire (who has disguised himself as Dr. Marlow) in a way that echoes the earlier Fisher movie.



However, the recognizable Hammer tropes give way to something more akin to Jean Rollin by the end, as the film increasingly grows more surreal and less governed by plot and dialogue and more by so by image and monologue. As the lover of one of the women, Victor Alcazar's character appears set up as the film's hero, strong, sexually desirable to women, with instincts to protect. However, he falls victim to vampirism himself fairly early in the film, a departure from what we would expect from a Hammer film, where we generally see women placed in positions of dependency to men. In fact, the general attitude toward evil in COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE appears skewed when compared to traditional Dracula films: Instead of standing as the source of control over a monolithic evil, Naschy's Dracula creates other vampires that he not only can't control, but with whom he seems decidedly at odds.



Of course, the filmmakers may have devised this kind of characterization so that we can see Naschy's Dracula play hero at convenient spots in the film, killing his share of vampires and serving as the male protector in these scenes. However, he still seems the embodiment of evil he cannot control and, at times, genuinely seems to regret. (How often do we get to see such a tender moment involving Dracula as when he frees a trapped rabbit?) With its off-kilter approach, COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE takes its place in a canon of Spanish vampire films that include THE DRACULA SAGA and THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE, films that take risks and subvert the traditional narrative that Universal and Hammer had taught us to expect.



In an earlier post, I linked screenshots that suggested that the BCI disc would offer a substantial improvement over previous releases of the film. I'm happy to report that this is indeed the case; while not in pristine condition, BCI's print still offers the film in what appears to be close to the original aspect ratio. Very highly recommended.

THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964)

Antonio Margheriti directs this inky Italian gothic from a script by the prolific Ernesto Gastaldi, with obvious inspiration from Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY. THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH may pale in comparison, but I still find that it has plenty to offer on its own. The above image beautifully captures the despair of Barbara Steele's character, Helen, as she simultaneously mourns the death of her mother, burned for witchcraft, and seems to use still flaming embers to call upon otherworldly forces, having unsuccessfully sacrificed her virginity to the cruel count in a bid to save her mother. As a whole, Margheriti's film may not be able to match Bava's, but he still manages to give us one of the most memorable scenes in 1960s Italian gothic horror.



The plot develops this way: After Helen is murdered, we watch the accused witch's other daughter, Elizabeth, grow up to eventually marry the count's son, Kurt. Consistent with the theme of doubling that seems to run through Italian gothic horror, the same actress, Halina Zalewska, plays both the executed witch and Elizabeth, but as usual, Barbara Steele, er, steals the show with her portrayal of Helen, who comes back from the dead during a stormy night and imposes herself in the family drama taking place in the castle. Kurt and Elizabeth have a chilly relationship, and it doesn't take long for Kurt to decide that he prefers Helen, and the two plot to murder Elizabeth.



As with any good gothic horror, however, things prove to be different than they seem, and Kurt finds that his plans to live happily ever after with Helen have taken a back-seat to someone else's intentions for revenge. Moreover, as with any good Italian gothic, we see secret passageways, madness, weighty religious iconography, and most importantly, a decent allotment of rotting corpses, including some impressive re-animation scenes. Roger Corman may have gotten to these themes and tropes earlier with his Poe adaptations (including his own Barbara Steele vehicle, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM), but I still find Margheriti's film more satisfying in several ways. Somehow he makes the presence of dark magic seem very real and ominous.

The Nightmarish Landscape of VAMPYR (1932)

Often derided as "dull," especially by contemporary audiences, Carl Theodor Dreyer's VAMPYR marks a surrealist, European response to the American-style sound horror film kicked off by Universal Studios' DRACULA. In fact, Dreyer reportedly watched Browning's film and conjured up VAMPYR as his own attempt to create something equally marketable. Yet his vision takes us into landscapes beyond the gothic walls of Browning's film, something in which occult influences threaten to break down the very structure of reality itself. Professing to draw from Sheridan Le Fanu's seminal vampire text, CARMILLA, VAMPYR actually bears little resemblance to its source, replacing the youthful, voluptuous vampire with something more akin to the "crone" of witchcraft lore.



Possessing very little in the way of a conventional narrative, the story follows David Gray, a student of the occult, who comes upon a small village plagued by the elderly vampire and her servant, a physician who instead of properly treating his patients, actually helps the vampire feed upon them. Hardly a traditional hero, Gray seems almost helpless as shadows move of their own volition, and in the most visually eerie moment of the film, he falls asleep during a crucial point and as a shadow/ghost, his gazes upon his own corpse as it is prepared for burial.



Dreyer's artistic sensibility brings the film to life, emphasizing image over narrative, and in at least this regard, he lays the groundwork for the European horror film for decades to come, as evident whenever we hear charges that European horror directors emphasize "style over substance." While relatively tame in terms of sexuality, hints of perversion bubble beneath the surface of the film, and we even see one of the vampire's victims bound up in a way that calls to mind some of the later, kinkier images of Jess Franco.



Perhaps VAMPYR does move a bit languidly, but I still find it a fascinating experience, one that culminates in one of the more disturbing moments in 1930s horror, as we see the vampire's servant meet his end in a scene that seems unnaturally drawn out. Definitely worth one's time, though avoid late night viewings when you're prone to falling asleep--you may have disturbing dreams.

Happy Birthday to the Wolf Man

In his autobiography, MEMOIRS OF A WOLFMAN, Paul Naschy describes how the scene of his birth on Sept 6th, 1934 looked through the eyes of his father. Naschy writes, "My father once told me that he'd looked up at the sky at dusk and it had seemed to be steeped in blood." He goes on to say that it "was September 6 at six in the morning; it only needed one more six to complete the Satanic triad." So begins the life of Paul Naschy, one that impacted Spanish horror cinema with films like VENGEANCE OF THE MUMMY, COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE, HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB, the recent ROJO SANGRE, and the stunning series of Waldemar Daninsky werewolf movies beginning with MARK OF THE WOLF MAN. The still above comes from THE NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF, a film released in 1980 that Naschy directed as well as starred in.

Soon, BCI will release COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE in anamorphic widescreen, and while they did not go back to the original negative, the results are evidently still very much worth seeing. Go over to this thread at the Latarnia forums to see screen-shots. Also, I'm currently reading BRIDES OF THE IMPALER by Edward Lee, one of my favorite "splatterspunk" authors, and while it's relatively toned down compared to his previous work, it functions as a loving homage to Eurohorror films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, including the films of Naschy. Check it out.